Tech troubles: Long delay ahead for Vermont court upgrade

Dec. 8, 2012

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

Seeking an upgrade

The Judiciary asked for proposals for two kinds of replacement systems: • A “cloud” system in which the state would pay a service fee to a company that would provide servers and manage the operating system off site. • A system in which the state would buy new servers and contract for personnel to maintain them as well as the operating system. “We are taking the results we need and comparing each proposal’s approach to accomplishing those,” Greemore said. “Then we will make a choice.” However, under the state’s tougher review procedures, the proposal the Judiciary favors will then need to be subjected to an independent review to evaluate risks and potential for success. This project’s cost was pegged at $2 million to $2.7 million over five years.

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Most Vermont lawyers weren’t sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for the Judiciary to flip the switch on a statewide case management system, but perhaps they should have been.

“Those of us who were following it and looking forward to it were disappointed when it slowed down,” said Robert Paolini, executive director of the Vermont Bar Association. “There is a lot of promise in what they wanted to do.”

Paolini offered examples. The system would have allowed lawyers to replay a court hearing. The proposed central calendar would allow court personnel to avoid scheduling the same lawyer to be in two different courts at the same time.

“All of that is going to be so great for the practice of the law,” Paolini said.

Associate Supreme Court Justice John Dooley had suggested as the project began that it would allow courts to move from file cabinets full of bulging paper folders to a statewide electronic cabinet full of electronic records.

But instead of happening soon, it could be another five to seven years before the Judiciary replaces its two-decade-old case management system.

Earlier this year, the Judiciary suspended its contract with New Dawn Technologies, a Utah-based vendor that worked for three years to develop a single system to manage cases in all Vermont courts.

Development bogged down, the schedule fell by the wayside and the money allocated under the contract was no longer going to be enough, said Bob Greemore, court administrator. “We felt that wasn’t acceptable.”

The state had paid New Dawn $1.7 million before suspending the project. The parties are negotiating how to end the relationship. Department of Information and Innovation Commissioner Richard Boes said it was too soon to know if the talks would result in any refund such as the state received from Hewlett Packard for a failed system for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Spoiled by the old

The court system was spoiled by the success of the current case management system.

“Twenty-five years ago, we decided to have people write our own. It was tailored to our needs. It has proven to be, for its age, a great system,” Associate Justice Dooley said. Officials wanted the same kind of comprehensive, satisfying system this time around.

“It’s not only the volume of cases — 55,000 a year — but it is the diversity,” he said, listing family, criminal, civil and probate. A new case management system, for example, would need to create different forms and allow different levels of access to records.

As with other technology projects that derailed in recent months, the case management project involved “setting up something nobody else had ever done,” Boes said.

Greemore noted that New Dawn had a base product that managed cases in prosecutors offices that it had hoped to build on — but it didn’t come together fast enough.

Now the court’s technology committee is looking at systems in use in other states, “what is succeeding and what is not,” Dooley said. The panel hopes to recommend a new direction to the Supreme Court in the next few weeks.